As Kansas prepares to play Southern Illinois in the third round of the NCAA Tournament tonight, it doesn’t look like a fair fight: Kansas has a roster stocked with high school All-Americans who see college as a stepping stone to a pro career, while Southern Illinois doesn’t have a single player who was heavily recruited out of high school or is sought after by NBA scouts.

Kansas also has a basketball tradition that includes four national championships and dates all the way back to its first coach, James Naismith, who invented the game. On the other hand, the basketball history at Southern Illinois consists mostly of Walt Frazier leading the Salukis to the NIT title in 1967 before embarking on his Hall of Fame career with the Knicks.

But Southern Illinois is 29–6 this season and is building a basketball tradition of its own, and tonight’s game isn’t quite the David vs. Goliath match-up it might seem. Over the last six years, Southern Illinois has made the Big Dance every season, scratching and clawing its way to the point where it has joined Gonzaga as a small-conference school that can no longer be considered a second-tier program.

Although the Salukis don’t have the financial resources of majorconference schools, they’ve beaten enough of those teams that they’re a legitimate force in college basketball. The Salukis were a surprise Sweet 16 team in 2002, and with each passing year college basketball fans have grown increasingly accustomed to seeing Southern Illinois in the field of 64. At this point, it’s no surprise to see the Salukis still alive after the seasons of many elite programs (including Duke, Kentucky, and Indiana) have come to an end.

Located in Carbondale, which is as close to Little Rock as it is to Chicago, Southern Illinois is often overlooked even in its own state. And neither the state’s flagship school nor other top programs in the Midwest have done anything to help the Salukis: The Illinois Fighting Illini, like most Big Ten schools, avoid scheduling Southern Illinois, and Big Ten schools have twice used their superior financial resources to lure away Southern Illinois’ coaches. After that 2002 Sweet 16 run, Illinois hired coach Bruce Weber away from Southern Illinois, and a year later Purdue hired the Salukis’ next coach, Matt Painter. Now there’s talk that current Southern Illinois coach Chris Lowery could leave for Michigan.

Lowery is a Southern Illinois graduate who emphasizes defense, just as Weber and Painter did before him. The Salukis’ formula for success is simple: Force the opposition to take bad shots, then dominate the defensive glass. It works so well that the Salukis have given up a total of just 99 points in their two tournament wins, they allowed 50 or fewer points in 12 of their 35 games, and their average of 56.1 points allowed is the third best in the country. Their best defensive player is 6-foot-7 junior Randal Falker, an excellent shot blocker and defensive rebounder.

Of course, none of Southern Illinois’ previous opponents have the offensive firepower that Kansas has, and Falker will have his hands full tonight, as four Kansas players who are bigger and more athletic than him (Julian Wright, Darrell Arthur, Sasha Kaun and Darnell Jackson) will log significant minutes. The already difficult task of stopping the big, athletic Jayhawks will become even tougher with Southern Illinois forward Matt Shaw unlikely to play because of an ankle injury.

At the other end of the floor, Kansas plays defense with every bit the intensity that Southern Illinois does, and Kansas has better athletes doing it. The Salukis’ best scorer, Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year Jamaal Tatum, will need to have a great game for Southern Illinois to keep things close.

If it is close late in the game, Kansas’s superior depth would seem to give the Jayhawks an advantage. But Lowery is known for running brutal practice sessions, reasoning that his players can’t play with more talented opponents unless they’re in better shape. As a result, Southern Illinois always gives the opposition everything it has for 40 minutes, and Kansas will be no exception. And with seniors Tatum and Tony Young as their two main ball handlers, the Salukis have more experienced guard play than Kansas, which is never a bad thing in March.

Losing Tatum and Young will hurt the Salukis next year, and losing Lowery would hurt even more, but three sophomores and three juniors play significant minutes for Southern Illinois, so the program’s winning tradition won’t stop when this year’s tournament run comes to an end. The Salukis aren’t ready to think about the future, though. A victory over Kansas tonight would be the biggest win since the Frazier-led squad’s 1967 NIT title, and it would have Southern Illinois one step from the Final Four. But at this point, no one should call the Salukis a Cinderella.

Mr. Smith covers basketball for AOLSportsBlog.com.